Be nice!
Kobayashi,
You've stated that this blog is not about Star Trek, apart from the name. But did you notice that the problem-with-no-solution you've put forward here is *exactly* the Kobayashi Maru?
I've nothing to add, except to say that this, plus my Catholic outlook, leaves me optimistic that a solution will be found.
Somehow.
Call me dense, but I had not consciously framed this one at a "Kobayashi Maru"... though of course - as you point out - it is. Heh, heh, heh...
And yes, faith leads me to believe that a solution, albeit not a conventional one, and perhaps not with a conventional ending, will be found.
The answer, I suspect/fear/hope comes after a huge and largely successful Islamist attack, maybe nuclear, but if not, nearly so in terms of destruction and loss of life. After which, people in the rest of the world simply suppress, by force if necessary, the politically correct chattering class that still refuses to "get it," and then goes about the business defined by Curtis LeMay--"If you kill enough of them, they'll stop fighting."
I wish it were otherwise, but the West's Fifth Column is not only strong, it is in control in many places (e.g., Europe and the Democratic Party in the US) and in many ways (e.g., media, academia). Until that ends, no real progress (for the good) will occur, so the center of gravity of the situation is the circumstances under which they will be decisively refuted and repudiated. Ony then can the gloves come off. Until then, Iran et al have no reason to change their behavior.
Somewhere in the 2008-2011 time frame, I think.
Look, the ragheads don't have the discipline to NOT use the bomb after they have it. This means they WILL invoke a largely unprovoked attack on Israel, presumably taking out Tel Aviv.
They won't have enough bombs to do any more damage than that -- but they will manage that much.
...And then the American public will wake up for long enough to fix this problem, one way or another.
Don't forget, while there is certainly a follow-up bow-wave of the descendants of leftist idiots (i.e., the 60s flower children), the country is on an increasing slant to the right. Xtians are outreproducing the Atheist/Abortive left, and even those Dems which are reproducing are "minorities" and other non-white subgroups which are increasingly likely to change sides with increasing prosperity. So things will only get better with time.
Yes, we'll have to pay the price for taking that time. Remember to thank a flower child by spitting on their grave.
Well, I think the Tom Barnett types would suggest that you "win" by having muslims see for themselves that an open, market economy yields a better life. My problem with this is that the example that is always put forward is China. They may be doing fine economically but I haven't seen much political change.
One problem (among many) that I have with Tom Barnett's argument - in addition to the one Barnabus notes re. China - is that Islamofascist doctrine defines "better life" in entirely different terms than our own and defines ours as inherently blasphemous. That makes for a long and probably unproductive slog to Islam seeing the Western light. It's a retread of the argument used during the Cold War: i.e., just wait... they'll eventually see. Except that in this case, "they" are strongly incented with other-worldly rewards. The only way to compete with that is with an alternative story of divine truth. I found it interesting listening to Hannity interview the two FOX reporters kidnapped in the Gaza Strip. One mentioned that his muslim captors had been quite keen to learn more about what he thought about Jesus - and not just as an excuse to behead them. Now there's an opening that's a lot more fruitful than talking about the wonders of the New York Stock Exchange!
Generally speaking, I have always observed the fanaticism with which political Islam pursues the TRAPPINGS of an successful, liberal, democratic society. Case in point is Iran's single-minded pursuit of a nuclear weapon. Although they will have the capability to produce a weapon, they do not have the cultural and intellectual infrastructure/institutions to maintain a prolonged struggle against the West.
A military example of this, think of the Muslim infantrymen, who employ a "spray and pray" aim technique when firing their weapons. Contrast this with the fire discipline of a Western trained infantrymen, who carefully aims each individual shot by sighting down the barrel. The WORST soldier that our society produces will beat the BEST that their society produces in any battle. Expand that metaphor to the macro level...and my point may be clearer.
For this to change (e.g. for Islamic society to ever have a chance to defeat the West) they will have to adopt our institutions, oppenness, willingness to learn from mistakes, value of the individual, etc. basically all of the values that make us successful. Assuming that they do adopt those values (e.g. as soon as their cultural infrastructure has evolved to include these traditions), I like to think that despite possibly having the ability to defeat the West, they will no longer wish to, because their values will dictate against that.
The catch is that Political Islam and the cultural infrastructure that releases the potential of every individual and, in the aggregate, the nation/society are two mutually exclusive phenomena at this point.
In short, we will always be able to beat them unless and until our culture falters or theirs evolves. If theirs evolves, we will not have to defeat them because they would rather trade than fight.
mjh says "they do not have the cultural and intellectual infrastructure/institutions to maintain a prolonged struggle against the West. "
Iran has been fighting the West since Alexander's day, up through the Romans and note it was never colonized (although it was in play as part of the "Great Game" in the 1800's).
That said I am not willing to concede to a bunch of barbarians that do not appreciate their own civilization
Hi, Kobayashi.
First of all, congrats on the Watcher's Council win for a fine piece...even thoughg I disagree with your central premise.
I don't agree with you that we are `stuck'...merely victims of a lack of will.
There are no internally critical aspects of Islam we in the West can `force to the surface' ..because Islam is NOT a self questioning ideology, at least when it comes to the religious imperative of jihad.To be a Muslim is to SUBMIT.
That sort of questioning is a western Judeo/Christian tradition.
If we want to stop Islamic fascism, we must deal with it exactly as we dealt with fascism the last time we fought it.
For instance, Iran:
J O S H U A P U N D I T: Time to do the mullah dance
As for radicalism in Western countries, once again, that is caused by our willingness to allow people like the Saudis and the UAE to fund and control most of the mosques and madrassahs to the tune of millions per year to export jihad to America and the West, and our willingness to allow them to fund political groups in the US like CAIR and the MPAC.
This sort of activity is neither Constitutional, legal or protected, and certainly not a given if we enforce existing laws or modify them in minor ways and have zero tolerance for jihad and Islamic fascism.
A firm response to jihad overseas would likewise change the equation considerably...especially in dealing with the kind of mentality we are up against.
The US should blockade Iran. This would force Iran to either attack the US in Iraq or the navy/airforce blockade either one would be a disaster for them. It would also give a chance to others inside the country to explore options. We should never invade Iran, but we can reduce their military capabilities if it comes to that.
I am not sure if it can be considered an internal contradiction, but as I see it, the Islamic ideology stultified several formerly great cultures, such as that of Persia. The Islamic world sucks because of Islam. That may be the internal contradiction. If it were not for the oil, the Islamic world would be nothing. The Arabs would be riding around on camels, instead of in Rolls Royces. There would be madrassas only in Saudi Arabia.
The day the world dumps fossil fuels is the day that Islam begins its whirl down the sewer of history, which is exactly where it belongs.
An internal contradiction I see, is the proclaimed unity of the Muslim world. They're NOT united. They are intensely competitive not only as Sunni vs. Shia but from ethnicity to ethnicity and tribe to tribe. Of course this is not so much a contradition within Islam as it is between Islam and the cultures of its adherents.
Two ways to build Muslim unity - and over rule this internal contradiction.
(1) Give them a common enemy so they can unite in the fight.
(2) Enculturate them in modern Western ways of tolerance. Even if Islam tolerance might function differently than Western tolerance, it appears to build unity of Muslims within Western countries.
I too would like to offer my congratulations on an excellent post. Regarding the answer to your question, I think it has already been hinted at in your comment above and in Richard H’s comment about the lack of Muslim unity. Islamofascism itself has no internal contradiction that can be exploited, but it is split in Sunni and Shi`a camps, and those camps are minority doctrines in Islam. That in itself is not necessarily a fatal contradiction.
The contradiction that could matter is that it is likely these doctrines are best adapted to surviving as a minority because they are not well suited to governing, and that their success would eventually do them in, as pan-Arabism was done in by its failures. Unfortunately, waiting for that contradiction, if it indeed is operative, is very risky. Their ascendancy, if they achieved it, might be unstable but they could easily make entirely too much catastrophic trouble before they collapsed. So the key is not so much contradiction but competition, as Richard points out in his second point.
The point of promoting democracy and the essential civil liberties upon which it depends is not that every Muslim or even most will buy into it in the near term. The point is that enough will to raise and ideological and practical challenge to Islamofascists, which makes their job that much harder and puts critical time pressure on them, making our efforts to engage and defeat them by direct means all the more effective. (For those who are interested in more in this vein, Shrinkwrapped was kind enough to post my greatly expanded and rather long thoughts on this and related strategic topics over at his blog.)
A word about China: China is not an example of anything but China. It has had stable authoritarian social structure for over 6,000 years. This social structure exists and has been stable because it is a product of China’s rather unique environment. To the extent that economic development shifts the basis of subsistence in China, traditional authoritarianism will begin to erode, and in fact it has already in those places most effected. But this will take a long time; 6,000 years of tradition does not go swiftly or quietly. But for the immediate purposes, the Chinese example has little or no relevance to questions about Islam or pretty much anywhere else.
Mr. K writes:
The day the world dumps fossil fuels is the day that Islam begins its whirl down the sewer of history, which is exactly where it belongs.A point I've made several times on my blog.
My frustration with GWB stems largely from his failure to get this point - or his (treasonous, if conscious) work to maintain oil (fossil) company profits despite the devastating costs.
you "win" by having muslims see for themselves that an open, market economy yields a better life.
They know this already. Sharia dictates they refuse it, so they do. The consequences do not matter because the option, as a religious matter, simply is not available to them.
Re. Engineer-Poet: one can frame the question as reducing dependence on fossil fuels, but one can also frame it as reduced dependence on foreign oil - and the two are not mutually exclusive. The question quickly turns in the first case to what personal freedoms you'd be prepared to give up (e.g., choice of, and/or price for a vehicle and/or the right to use it as you see fit) and in the second case to what environmental red tape you'd be willing to short-cut (e.g., drilling in ANWR and other domestic locations). Either way, there are trade-offs.
Re. Avenger and others: I fear that radical muslims know all too well the objective benefits of modern society (e.g., medicine, education, technological luxuries) and they have defined them to be antithetical to Islam. I.e., they are not at all benefits within Islam, but the signs of sin and depravity. I agree that these manifestations of wealth and well-being ought to be objective no-brainers, but it is only wihin our Western frame of reference that that is so (or rather, so goes the Islamofascist line). Contradictions internal to Islam are much harder to find. To my knowledge, the Koran and Hadith (and, to be fair the Torah and Christian Bible) do not say that the wealth of oneself or one's society is a sign of piety. Quite to the contrary.
Having read a small bit from Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Orianna Falacci and Wafa Sultan; I recommend that we live well and live good lives. That, by our lives as examples, we show that the true God is a God of love. Muslims are proud but ignorant souls. Not stupid, ignorant. Denied knowledge. And their idol is a tyrant. Our greatest hope of persuasion lies in what they see of our response to the earthquake in Bam, the typhoon in Indonesia, the earthquake in Kashmir. Let us live industrious, productive lives. Our efforts should be to provide more food, more medicines, new medicines, build schools. Make life better, celebrate life, love life.
Not what we say, what we do.
Sonar: Amen to that!!
The question quickly turns in the first case to what personal freedoms you'd be prepared to give up (e.g., choice of, and/or price for a vehicle and/or the right to use it as you see fit) and in the second case to what environmental red tape you'd be willing to short-cut (e.g., drilling in ANWR and other domestic locations). Either way, there are trade-offs.The status quo ante has huge costs in personal freedoms too (like my co-worker who turned in his military retirement paperwork and got called up for Iraq instead). It's entirely possible for a change to yield an improvement.
My favorite scheme is to internalize the costs that our economic and military policies have externalized. We should be putting all the military costs of defending the Middle East on oil consumers (if we need to tax tankers exiting the Persian gulf, fine). I've seen an estimate that the all-up cost of a gallon of gasoline from the world as a whole is $8, and the cost of a gallon from the Middle East is $11! Needless to say, the policies which led to pump prices under $1/gallon in 1998 had a huge distorting effect, leading to rampant over-consumption. Even heading toward $3/gallon, we're not even halfway to where it should be.
I have been railing against guzzlers since forever, and I made a personal choice in 2004 to do the best I could to go the other way. I now own a diesel and I get close to 40 MPG on the highway. I currently live about a mile from work. I have cut way, way back on my daily fuel consumption. I'm ready for $5/gallon fuel, or even higher.
The problem is the people who look only at the pump price and various types of hype and consider buying a flex-fuel Tahoe that will get 7 MPG city on E85. It'll get 10 on gasoline, so that's the only thing they'll put in it.
My program is just to tax petroleum and fossil carbon, period. No exemptions. Rebate 100% of the collected tax as a flat zero-bracket amount on withholding taxes. This is revenue-neutral, has no loopholes for rent-seekers, and will reward every effort to cut back on petroleum and fossil carbon. It wouldn't matter how you did it, if you did it you'd pay less in tax and keep more of the rebate. Insulate your house, dump the Jet-Ski and get a sailboat, just drive with a lighter foot - money in the pocket, no further action required.
Tell me that it doesn't increase my freedom to give me a thousand different ways to pay less taxes, instead of having to jump through government hoops and deal with red tape.
I wish someone would paint Islam as a tool for Arab colonialism. I tried it with Jim Zogby and got a very cold reply...what a shock! But it seems clear to me that Mohamed contrived his religion as a tool to unite Arab tribes and conqueor the world. He even confiscated a pagan rock as the center of worship, and so all the faithful bow to their arab rulers.
I am starting to like the idea of a user fee for fossil fuel too, eng-poet. and I really hate more taxes, but I hate even worse the thought of any of my money lining the pockets of Arabs.
Me too, Mr. K. Me too. I paid roughly double for a diesel car so I could send less money to the Wahhabist entity.
Mr. K and EP: You may be onto something here with the very specific admonition "not to send money to the Wahhabists". We could argue all day about the specific forms of and appropriate economic actors for driving such change, about tax structures and environmental responsibility and liberty and all that, but bottom line: that's a great slogan.
It reminds me of a roommate of mine in college whose rationale for not doing drugs was that he didn't want to wake up thinking he'd lined the pockets of Colombian drug lords who killed people. It's a rather unusual rationale, but it was sincere. He stayed clean and the drug lords were at least one customer poorer for it.
e-p:
I actualy bought my wife a prius. I am waiting for one of the automakers to put out a small truck with a good diesel. I am an engineer of a different sort and need a truck for what I do. I saw that the jeep was supposed to have one out but I have not seen it in my area.
I think we have to do what we can. Freedom of choice or whatever, most americans simply do not need the vehicles they drive. Period. Some of these vehicles are almost cruel jokes. Escalades? If you need a truck, you probably also need to be able to hose out the interior. It pisses me off to see some fat ass in a suit, in a truck.
...and when I finally get that diesel truck, I am going to dump used french fry oil in there...the Mythbusters did it, so can I!
Actually there appear to be several rather quick ways to solve this. There is considerable internal civilian turmoil within Iran itself. What it needs is a spark to set it off. The quickest, easiest, and most risky option would be to insert (if we have not already) a special ops team(s) to encourage, fund, supply a revolt and to blow up Iran's oil storage facilities.
The next option would be to bomb or missal both the oil facilities and the nuclear facilities (perhaps a penetrator with its own nuke warhead designed to make their facility unusable).
Another option would be a total blockade. Mine the harbors and land borders, and declare its airspace a free fire zone. Nobody and nothing gets in or out without our permission.
None of this is real hard to do. Getting the will to do it is the hard part.
Which would require saving enough oil to avoid spiking the world price. Americans could drive 60 MPH on the highway and stop buying guzzlers overnight, given the will (lots of people did it after Katrina).
I don't see this happening unless it's legislated so that everyone has to do it and the pain is shared.
Internal contradictions and checkmate strategies leave one essential truth out:
At some point, an event will occur that pisses off the majority of Americans. We're slow to be roused. Once we are roused, the niceties go out the window.
I support President Bush - but the Bush/Cheney 1% doctrine of preemptive war simply runs counter to the American psyche, to the way we do things. This doctrine will always struggle to find traction with our People.
But the time will come when the Islamofascists hit us very hard. And our reaction will at that time - and only at that time, not before - be immense and intense.
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